What game are you wasting time on?

[Arbiter]

Currently playing Ultima Underworld. It's embarassing to admit, but this is my first playthrough, even though I am a long time fan of System Shock and Thief.

 

[JDR13]

Blood and SW also felt dated, having been released after Quake. Duke proudly claimed "I ain't afraid of no Quake" in early 1996, but by 1997 the engine was clearly past its prime. 1997 also saw releases of Hexen 2 and Jedi Knight, the era of sprite graphics and software rendering was over.

Dated or not, the single-player in Blood was a hell of a lot more fun than Quake.

 

[Gregz]

Currently playing Ultima Underworld. It's embarassing to admit, but this is my first playthrough, even though I am a long time fan of System Shock and Thief.

How are you liking it?

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Blood and SW also felt dated, having been released after Quake. Duke proudly claimed "I ain't afraid of no Quake" in early 1996, but by 1997 the engine was clearly past its prime. 1997 also saw releases of Hexen 2 and Jedi Knight, the era of sprite graphics and software rendering was over.

Dated or not, the single-player in Blood was a hell of a lot more fun than Quake.

Here's a mindblowing idea: Blood, SW, Q1, Hexen 2 and Jedi Knight are all great games. Also, comparing Hexen 2 with Blood or SW doesn't make much sense, although I get that it was about the graphics/engine in this particular case.

 

[Sunri]

Currently playing Drakengard 3 and can't beat last boss rhythm game

 

[Arbiter]

Currently playing Ultima Underworld. It's embarassing to admit, but this is my first playthrough, even though I am a long time fan of System Shock and Thief.

How are you liking it?

It is impressive what was possible several months before Wolfenstein 3D release. I wonder how well UU run on hardware of that time. It is hard to believe but Wikipedia tells me that UU sold 500K copies, 2,5x more than Wolfenstein 3D. Several years later SS and Thief sales were eclipsed by Doom and Quake. Perhaps John Carmack's brilliance lies not in his technical abilities, but his infamous and prophetic words about plots in games not being that important.

This game also inspired Elder Scrolls Arena. Let that sink in - there would be no Oblivion without UU.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Perhaps John Carmack's brilliance lies not in his technical abilities, but his infamous and prophetic words about plots in games not being that important.

I'd say it's more about the complexity.

LGS games required more time to learn the game and controls and also a somewhat methodical and slower approach to the gameplay.
ID games were easy to pick up and play -- you'd learn the rules quickly and learn how to deal with the rest along the way, not to mention they looked more engaging to the average gamer due to their speed.

Both approaches are valid, but it's a shame the latter ended up being more popular, while the former ended up being a niche within a niche.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

It is impressive what was possible several months before Wolfenstein 3D release. I wonder how well UU run on hardware of that time.

That was the downside with two of biggest releases from Origin of 1992 - both Ultima Underworld and Ultima 7 demanded beefy PCs to even run properly. Ultima Underworld ran fairly well on a high-end 386 but wouldn't be smooth until it ran on a 486. Running it on a low-end 386 was painful, to say the least.

Ultima 7 didn't even try to run smoothly until it was on a 486, and even then the 25Mhz processors had some problems with it.

(Just don't ask about running Ultima 8 on a 386 - I've done it and do not recommend it.)

Meanwhile Wolfenstein ran decently on machines as weak as 12 Mhz 286 processors - it didn't even need memory above 640Kb, while the two Ultima games wouldn't run without at least 2Mb of it.

EDIT: Typo.

 

[Arbiter]

Speaking of Ultima, nice art from DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/sirtiefling/art/Ultima-350981517

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Playing a little of AMID EVIL, a modern love poem to Heretic/Hexen. Heretic (but not Hexen with its confusing and frustrating Hub convolutions, though I eventually did come beck to it and beat it) was one of my primo FPS experiences back in the day. AMID EVIL captures some of that.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Meanwhile Wolfenstein ran decently on machines as weak as 12 Mhz 286 processors - it didn't even need memory about 640Kb, while the two Ultima games wouldn't run without at least 2Mb of it.

This was baby's first FPS for me, I think (though I may have played Catacomb 3D first). Ran like a dream on my old Radio Shack Tandy 286-based PC with the integrated VGA and sound. It defined me in what i would come to prefer in action games. Ultima 7 still kind of runs like shit on MS-DOS based platforms and emulations. It has that annoying "take 5 steps, micro-pause, take another 5 steps, another micropause, etc" thing going on.

 

[Jvegi]

ToEE. Finally getting deep into this. The interface can be annoying, but it could be worse.

Ignoring Hommlet feels great. Frogs and bandits at lvl1 are no issue.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Ignoring Hommlet

You absolute madman. I want to know what it's like to have that kind of willpower.

 

[Jvegi]

Ignoring Hommlet

You absolute madman. I want to know what it's like to have that kind of willpower.

Try playing the game since it came out, not being able to get to anything fun, abandoning it, going back to it at least 5 times, abandoning it each time, going through boring 3.5 edition party creation every single fucking time..

 

[d1r]

Modding Fallout New Vegas...

Modding Fallout New Vegas ...

It never ends...

 

[Sad He-Man]

This thread name has never been more apt. I recently played - or tried playing - the following games on my PS4:

Horizon Zero Dawn
Jesus Christ what a slog of a game. It can be pretty, sure. It is not as pretty as the camera mode screenshots or 4chan webms suggest.
The draw distance is as mediocre. The gameplay is bad. I kept hearing that the combat system in this game is good. Aiming with controller sucks, fighting against human enemies sucks more. And the grind, oh the grind.
And then there is the story. Jesus Christ.

God of War
The graphics are also not as good as various screenshot threads would make you believe.
The gameplay is better and it has nice weight to it. The story and characters are... not bad I guess? But it does seem like a wasted potential.
If you would scratch supernatural elements like Baldr and World Serpent, you would end up with a story about a suspect wife beater murder hobo with deranged son traveling through rough looking terrain and talking to other mentally unstable characters like gypsy-hippie-woman and black market weapon fencers with dwarfism.

Dark Souls 2
This is okay. I am fully aware of this game's shortcomings. This was my second playthrough. Went with Dex build. Had lots of fun. Realized gaming can be fun again.

In conclusion - what the fuck PS4 exclusives.

 

[octavius]

Spent a few days preparing my chronological play list for 2001.

Then I noticed that Soulbringer was now finally on 70-75% sale (I'm a total skinflint when it comes to supporting big publishers like Infogrames) on GOG, bought it, installed it and took it for a test ride.
First impression was not very favourable. Poorer graphics than the similar Evil Islands which was released a few months later, and the camera controls were more limited. Hopefully the gameplay will make up for it, but according to Wikipedia it wasn't well received.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Nothing seems to stick at the moment, so I've been going for some bite-sized stuff. Getting back into NEO Scavenger thanks to PulsatingBrain. Still haven't beaten it, but I've freshened up my skillz and gotten past the hurdle of wilderness survival again, so now I'm mostly beelining for Detroit and dying horribly soon after, sometimes during quests but mostly to punks with ranged weaponry or night-time assassins. I'm getting there, I swear.

Also finally tried Faster Than Light, which I've owned since forever. I was absolutely cruising through the sectors, thinking that I was going to beat this on the first try (on Easy, but nonetheless). Then the mothership... had its way with me. It was not pretty.

 

[octavius]

Nothing seems to stick at the moment

You didn't enjoy Outlaws?

 

[Strange Fellow]

Nothing seems to stick at the moment

You didn't enjoy Outlaws?

Not especially, no. It's fine, the level design is OK (except for the water mill which was annoying) and it gets major points for style, but the hitscan enemies are completely bonkers. Sometimes they'll blast me full of holes in 0.1 milliseconds, and other times they'll just stand there talking to themselves ("Where are ya, marshal?") and let themselves be gunned down at my leisure. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.
I tried to play it like a stealth game like you said, but with level design being the way it is I'm not sure what that entails in practice, other than creeping around everywhere very slowly and sniping enemies from outside their vision range with the scoped rifle, which presents no challenge at all and isn't very much fun (I'm still doing it, but only to save myself the aggravation of going toe to toe with too many enemies at once). I dunno, maybe I don't like shooters after all, and Jedi Knight was just a fluke. I'm going to finish it, but it hasn't grabbed me.

 

[Kabas]

Tried Brigand: Oaxaca, an interesting deus ex like indie rpg. I feel like my charisma focused character is going to suffer down the road judging by how my AI companions behaved so far but receiving extra jink for every single quest feels nice.

Soulbringer

Poor graphics indeed but the art direction is pretty solid. Certain locations(usually indoor ones) manage to look really nice thanks to it.
Soulbringer also features some beautiful attack animations but you will need to utilize the combo system and raise your combat stat if you want to witness your character performing parries and stuff.
Not something i would be interesed in replaying but i felt it was worthwhile game to experience once.

 

[Okagron]

Decided to play Age of Mythology and still very enjoyable even after nearly 13 years of not playing it. Reaching the end of the Egypt portion of the campaign.

Update on this, finished the Fall of the Trident campaign just now and damn, it still holds up remarkably well. Beat it on Hard and i remember Hard kicking my ass when i was younger, but this time it was nowhere as difficult. Guess i have gotten much better since then.

Now i'll either do the Golden Gift mini campaign or just move on to the Titans campaign.

 

[octavius]

Nothing seems to stick at the moment

You didn't enjoy Outlaws?

Not especially, no. It's fine, the level design is OK (except for the water mill which was annoying) and it gets major points for style, but the hitscan enemies are completely bonkers. Sometimes they'll blast me full of holes in 0.1 milliseconds, and other times they'll just stand there talking to themselves ("Where are ya, marshal?") and let themselves be gunned down at my leisure. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.
I tried to play it like a stealth game like you said, but with level design being the way it is I'm not sure what that entails in practice, other than creeping around everywhere very slowly and sniping enemies from outside their vision range with the scoped rifle, which presents no challenge at all and isn't very much fun (I'm still doing it, but only to save myself the aggravation of going toe to toe with too many enemies at once). I dunno, maybe I don't like shooters after all, and Jedi Knight was just a fluke. I'm going to finish it, but it hasn't grabbed me.

Yea, the water mill level was frustrating.
One thing I liked about Outlaws was that your character and the enemies were all glass cannons, which I thought was very refreshing, being sick and tired of HP sponges. But yes, the AI could be a bit wonky sometimes, and with glass cannons there is more of a random element than with HP sponges.

I'm not sure I can trust my own judgement in FP games anymore. I loved Duke Nukem 3D a few years ago, now I think it's tedious and primitive. Even NOLF and Thief are not quite as fun anymore, which is worrying.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

Had a great beginning. A backpack and a shopping cart almost right away and plenty of water and food for a while and a decent meat cleaver.
Then 2 feral dogs who cut me up a bit, then this fucking asshole out of nowhere

My understanding of the game is much better now though. I've been playing a few runs a day and I love it at this point.

Aside from that lots of Bannerlord and Ruiner

 

[cosmicray]

I think my reflection on Half-Life is that the single player levels are a bit variable. The intro is great initially but then goes on far too long, then some great levels once you open the "resonance cascade" or whatever but once you tackled the three tentacle things it gets a bit boring for a while until it picks up for the peak of Surface Tension which I remember as being the best part of the game.

Yet the pace was just right, so it was still interesting, varied and never felt too long.

Then you get stuck in Xen shite and it ends. Think I've only gotten through Xen one time.

Xen was alright in itself, but jumping mechanics were too wonky to have proper fun. At least it wasn't that long.